What's to Come: Gender Neutral Mirroring

Stereotypes are something that we've all fallen prey to, considering that it's impossible to avoid it unless you choose the life of a misanthrope and hide in your log cabin to wait for the day people stop using that technology fad. We'll ignore the hermits, though, and focus on the reality of our society: stereotypes get our attention. As a society, we create stereotypes on our own accord, but advertisers always had a way to tap into that knowledge and use it for ulterior motives. Stereotypes are easy to work with because they get a point across quickly, and who on earth has time to work out encrypted messages anymore?

Advertising in the mid-century not only played off of the gender discriminatory mindset, but it also perpetuated the stereotypes so that they would stick, and so would the products. People genuinely thought it was okay to demean women because that was their decided role in society.

Relax gentlemen, your lady can putt around the house doing chores all day and look good doing it as long as you stuff her full of vitamins! Its the answer to all of our prayers!

But granted, it takes two to tango, and there's misandry littered throughout advertising as well. Once society figured out that ads such as the above weren't appropriate anymore and people were feeling more radical, ads with harsh messages about men were more prevalent. Some ads are more about good looking, muscular men representing the only kind of man who's "worth" something, and then there's the other side where men are subservient to women. 

Thusly, it's not difficult to see that gender stereotypes in advertisements apply to both sides.

The thing is, advertising has so long relied on those radical stereotypes and that there's a wide demographic of advertisers who don't even feel the need to think or be innovative with their techniques.    Michelle Wilkinson of Helium.com puts it nicely: "such stereotypes make it possible for them to reach their specified audience without having to expend much energy on thinking of new ways to appeal to people" (source). Stereotypes are a cop out nowadays, and the general public is starting to get that. Families aren't "traditional" anymore, and both men and women contribute to the family. 

Above are two advertisements for an adoption agency. Neither image shows two parents, nor any gender holding power over another with the decision of having a family. It's a neutral ad, and a lovely one at that. There are also ad campaigns that promote the idea of men fitting into what once was a female job: housework. Pinesol has done a seamless job making no big deal of the fact that all the "test subjects" in the commercial below are men.

Advertising has owned the reputation of holding a stereotyped mirror up to society, but it's steadily moving forward with normalizing gender roles because that's where society is heading. A+ work, Pinesol.